A common current interment practice is to first move a body to a mortuary where it is prepared for funeral services. In cases where a body is unclaimed, it is usually provided with minimum preparation and burial, paid for by public funds. A claimed body, after mortuary preparation, is usually placed in an ascetically pleasing casket and either displayed in an open casket funeral service or the casket alone is visible in a closed casket service. Often, after an indoor service the body and casket are moved to a prepared grave site in a cemetery, where a final service is performed.
At the prepared grave site the casket containing the body is set either on or in a box like crypt during a grave side funeral service, if one is conducted. None of these burial services need be changed for a Non-Horizontal Burial Method interment. Several types of Non-Horizontal Burial Method containers are designed to be set on floral or otherwise decorated boxes for open or closed casket funeral services in an in door or out door environment.
Currently the prepared grave is often a rectangular excavation approximately four feet wide by seven and a half feet long by six and a half feet deep. Walkways are left on all sides of the grave for later visitors, making a total of over 50 square feet of ground area to be set aside for each grave. A Non-Horizontal Burial Method interment process requires only about one third of the land area used for current burials.
The removed earth or other receiving material from the current-type grave excavation is usually piled next to the grave site and covered during a grave side funeral service, if one is conducted. After funeral services, the casket and or box like crypt is lowered to the bottom of the prepared grave excavation and the removed receiving material is shoveled back into the excavation. In a Non-Horizontal Burial Methods interment there is not a large volume of earth or receiving material to dig out and later replace, as from a current type grave excavation.
In current type burials, the removed receiving material is replaced and continuously tamped to slightly above the ground level of the excavation to reduce later settling and the showing of a depression. The extra material, left over because of the displacement of the coffin and or box like crypt, is hauled away. Ground cover, such as grass, is then restored over the site. In a Non-Horizontal Burial Methods burial, the receiving material from a far smaller hole is all that is left over and can be easily removed or scattered lightly over the surrounding area.
In current type burials, additional digging and preparation is often undertaken to provide for the installation of a headstone, plaque marker or monument and the installation of flower and flag receptacles for persons to later pay respects and honor the deceased. Provisions for plaques, markers, monuments, flower receptacles and flag receptacles are regularly built into Non-Horizontal Burial Method burial containers. With an eye to future grave site maintenance, a number of tops and end pieces, which will show at the grave site, are made very low to insure power mower clearance and some even have small channels around their outside edges for weed killer to mitigate the normal encroachment of the cemetery's ground cover.
Cemetery properties are usually selected and developed in costly, but pleasant areas with level and softer earth or other receiving materials. Roads, landscaping, fences, monuments, statues, trees, ponds and other items are added for utility and aesthetics. The cost of each grave site, and thus each burial, is relative to the number of grave sites on the developed cemetery property. The future business of a cemetery is based not only on maintenance of filled graves, but on the number of empty grave sites remaining within the cemetery. With the Non-Horizontal Burial Methods process a cemetery has about three times the grave sites as in current practice. In addition to interment in flat ground, Non-Horizontal Burial Method containers can be readily installed in ponds, steeply sloped land and very near to trees, adding greatly to the available grave site total in a cemetery.
The labor currently required to prepare a grave, perform a burial and return a site to a finished condition adds significantly to the high cost of each burial. The Non-Horizontal Burial Methods process eliminates the need for a large rectangular excavation, extensive refilling, and the later excavation for installation of markers and plaques.
The Non-Horizontal Burial Methods process reduces the cost of each grave site and each burial and approximately triples the business potential for each existing and new cemetery.